Akademik

n.

When a product or object from a movie, book, or other fictional source is made in the real world.

—defictionalize v.

Defictionalization isn't nearly so common. Not yet.

Consider the energy drink Brawndo, "the thirst mutilator." It first emerged in the blackly comic, 2006 cult film Idiocracy, directed by Mike Judge, creator of Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill.

The movie is set in a future where stupid people have outbred intelligent ones, and corporations have thoroughly dumbed down the populace. The sports drink Brawndo has completely replaced water (deemed to be inferior because it's used in toilets), even for farm irrigation. And, because Brawndo is high in electrolytes, it poisons all the plants.

Cut to last November, when Twentieth Century Fox, which released the movie, joined with Redux Beverages to bring Brawndo to the public. The bright green citrus drink, with its electrolyte, caffeine and vitamin jolt, comes with this tagline, adapted from the film's dialogue: "It's got what plants crave!"

—Patricia Hluchy. "When fiction becomes fact; Thank movies, TV, and literature for Holiday Inn, this jolt drink, and earthworm-flavoured jelly beans. Could 'defictionalization' become a new corporate strategy?," The Toronto Star, January 13, 2008

Whenever things claw their way out of books or movies and into the real world, I like to call it defictionalization. Favorite examples: when Spinal Tap went on tour in 1992, and when Buzz Rickson's started making jackets to match the one in Pattern Recognition.

—Lloyd Burchill, The object produced through suggestion: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009682.html (comment), Making Light, December 3, 2007

For the past decade, "All My Children" viewers have watched Erica Kane's (Susan Lucci) cosmetic company, Enchantment, grow. Soon, those viewers will be able to smell like their favorite fictional characters.

ABC's popular soap and retail behemoth Wal-Mart are turning the fictional Enchantment perfume into a real-life specially formulated scent.

—"ABC, Wal-Mart team up to defictionalize soap scent," Zap2It, June 21, 2004